DEEP INSIDE, SENSITIVE GUYS

On Tuesday,the actor Sylvester Stallone will be named action star of the millennium, and although the Las Vegas celebration is just two days away, some of us at Feminist Central still aren't sure what to do with the information.

I mean, technically, as feminists, we have to say it's cool when people, without harming any one, follow their bliss. Technically, it's about freedom of choice, right? If Sly is managing a cinematic career arc that goes from soft porn like "A Party at Kitty and Stud's" (with Stallone in the part of "Stud") to blowing the heads off bearded foreigners, well, that's a choice he's made and we must respect it. Pass the popcorn.

Only the crankier among us wonder in the dim dawn that follows a sleepless night what our lives would be like if life in the cinema were different because life on earth was different. Whence the Marlboro Man? And the boozy Southern broad with a backbone of steel and a heart of gold? And the quiet-but-hunky next-door neighbor? And the flirtatious ingenue?

Members of the Video Software Dealers Association Convention want to celebrate Stallone's 30-some years in the business, and they should do so. We are not here to argue. But let's think for a moment about what cinematic life is really like for Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Norris and their ilk. On the surface (and in the movies), these are rugged men who can snap your neck like a potato chip. Deeper, though -- and this gets glossed over in favor of car chases and bullet wounds -- the man's man more often than not turns out (horrors!) -- to be just another guy conflicted about his father. Or his mother. Or his first wife. Sure, you have to watch closely, and sure, the actor usually handles his pain with silence, but it's there, the sadness, grief and disappointment. He is running away from or running to an ideal of himself, an ideal he doesn't feel he has reached because his father hasn't given him his OK. Or something.

Even the harshest of action figures gives us a little glimpse into why they are so prone to action. (And a real action hero must give us only a glimpse. Witness Spider-Man. His heart and ennui are smack on his sleeve, and if there were any complaints about his latest incarnation in theaters, it was that there was too much girl and not enough pyrotechnics.)

So -- and we have to say this kind of thing here at Feminist Central -- it's rather funny that the same industry that gives us conflicted (and tough) men so derisively dismisses chick flicks that more openly explore those conflicts, as if action movies -- the traditional male-type entertainment -- are and should be the norm. In real life, that kind of thinking built business's Mommy Track, as if being a parent is outside the norm of adult life. In fact, it isn't, and neither is conflict that results in action.

So maybe we're not so different, we boys and girls at the cinema, not so long as we remind ourselves that at the heart of all heroes is just another yahoo working out a bad romance. Or a lousy childhood. Or an aloof father. Or something.

Meanwhile, back in Vegas, Stallone's award says that "Rocky Balboa and John Rambo are cinema cornerstones in American culture and have become synonymous with courage and rough-hewn integrity." On his part, Stallone says he is "very, very humbled by that. There's a lot of competition out there" -- and scant little of that, these days, from Stallone himself. Our hero is getting a little long of tooth to bulk up and rappel down a wall.

So here's another thought we're kicking around at FC: The next action star award won't be handed out for another 1,000 years. Say we all get therapy, work through our pain and give birth to mentally healthy offspring. Say over the next millennium the generations evolve into higher versions of our conflicted selves. And then imagine the next winner of the action star award, if you can. Yeah. Me, neither.